I always fed my Zebras and L56 with bloodworm, and they seemed very happy and healthy. After a period of one month, they suddenly died with a large belly. My experience is that you can kill anything with bloodworms - if they've been handled improperly before being frozen. Unlike e.g. mosquito larva...

Fo

I'm wondering if someone could straighten out some "?" I've got regarding how to simulate wet/dry season cycles to induce spawning in loricarids? I gather that the "wet season" consists of daily large water changes with cooler water with low conductivity - but I'm unsure of what ...

I have never had any success with feeding Otocinclus. They would not accept manufactured foods I tried like Sinking Algae or Spirulina Wafers. Well, I'm far from an expert, and I've had lots of trouble getting my otos to eat, but I'll tell you my experiences. IME they tend to be leery of anything w...

The otos have now started feeding. It took a week, but at least two are feeding. They compete with the apple snails for the zucchini and brussel sprout, but haven't touched the lettuce. Once/if they've settled in I'll ID them and take some photos of them for Planetcatfish. No, although they're suspi...

Silurus wrote:So the otos are new additions to the tank?
Sounds like you may have gotten lousy stock from the shop.

Yeah, they're in poor shape. I knew the odds were bad when I bought them. That's why I'm so worried about getting them to eat something, anything, to get them going.

No, this isn't working. I've now gone through two brussel sprouts + a 1" piece of cucumber, and I'm just feeding my apple snails - I don't think the otcincluses have eaten any of it at all. The ottos are scared silly of anything I put in the tank, and wont go near. I have four large apple snail...

Whew..... I'm glad we got the SIMPLE reply then.... is there an even simpler one? Sure: there is no qualitative difference between species and subspecies. The dividing line is arbitrary and subjective. The explanation why that is, is a bit more complicated though. Whether distinct but similar popul...

You might do some searching for the articles on the devastation being caused to native fish in Malaysian waterways before you include flowerhorns in your broad based theory....Barbie Last I heard there was considerable uncertainty whether those "flowerhorns" are really Amphilopus trimacul...

So you are serious? Im sorry but can you give me an idea to what degree you want to breed the fishes that they cant enter natural habitats anymore? All tanks will be filled with flower horns, balloon mollies, corys etc, pidgeon blood discus, bloody parrots, longfin Ancistrus....and how much "n...

Hi! Are you seriously saying that spreading and producing hybrids will help our nature? I am saying that domesticated breeds have a smaller chance of becoming established when introduced into environments where they dont belong, than do the wild type. If your primary concern is introduction of alie...

Then go ahead and kid yourself. Like it or not, people DO dump their unwanted fish in rivers, canals, streams. Yes, but if anything that's an argument FOR mongrels and domestication. Severely modified cultured strains of fish are unlikely to establish themselves in nature. There are no wild populat...

I have not had much problem with feeding my group of otos. I've fed them pieces of zucchini or peas thatI put in a glass of water and nuked in the microwave until the water was boiling and then put the vegetable in. Unfortunately mine are much, much, too suspicious for that. They still wont go with...

Silurus wrote:veggie clip

Aaaah... No, I haven't, I'm ashamed to admit. Never occurred to me. Good tip, will try immediately!

Once again I find that I'm having problem getting supplemental feed to my Otocinclus. They will absolutely not search for food on the bottom of the tank - so how can I feed them? I'm guessing I'm not the first to have this problem, so: how do you guys feed your ottos? Do you have some nifty tricks f...

Any comments? Serious hobbyists who want purebreed wont buy their mongrel fish, although I suppose the "parrot cichlid" and "flowerhorn" crowd might. Personally I dislike mongrels because they dilute the purebreeds, making it harder to find and identify pure species, other than ...

If you bought yours recently they are all coming from the same shipment from São Paulo, it was years since they last was selling them in the lfs. I'm not any expert on Oto's so therefor I put the question up to be sure of what I get. I've never seen this species before. I got mine two days ago, fr...

Same as these topic maybe http://forum.planetcatfish.com/viewtopic.php?p=39733#39733 I have a bunch of them too, they are not imported so frequently so they can be hard to find. Janne It looks almost identical to mine, yes! Your fish, if it is a described species, should be Otocinclus mimulus, as i...

I chanced upon some strange, large, Otocinclus flexilis yesterday. I've read Schaefers monography, and Kullanders paper on Otocinclus mimulus (which, incidentally, is a very interesting read, and available on the net: http://www.pfeil-verlag.de/04biol/pdf/ief14_3_08.pdf ), and, well, I'm not sure wh...

I've got 10 zebra-otos which I've been feeding quite heavily with spirulina-pellets, frozen artemia, and shrimp mix, in the hope to get them to breed. A few days ago I noticed that one of the largest fishes had grown very 'fat' - that is, had a very distended belly, and I thought it was a gravid fem...

Yep silurus is right again with noodling as the true redneck fishing method :lol: . Now that I know it's called noodling, I did a search for catfish + noodling and got a dozen webpages. Amazing. :shock: One of the webpages was actually the Urban Myths page, which had a page about that noodling WASN...

Well, I found one of the sites. You tell me, is this real?

http://espn.go.com/outdoors/general/col ... 36494.html

Some while ago I read about a sport allegedly practiced in parts of southern USA. It went something like this: wade in murky water, and look for a hollow log or similar. When you find one, thrust your hand in there. If there is a big catfish in there, it'll chomp down on your fist, and you can pull ...

Mike, Needless to say we get asked about Otocinclus ID quite a lot but rarely have an opportunity such as this to get such detailed images to look at. If you are able to and if you have the time I would certainly like to add some of your images to the site. Maybe even a few close-ups showing the ch...

I have narrowed it down to either O. mariae or O. vittatus . You need to count the number of non canal-bearing lateral plates that separate the anterior and posterior fields of canal-bearing plates (5 or less=mariae; 6 or more=vittatus), as well as the number of canal-bearing plates in the posterio...

Mike, The point is cost. This is oversimplified, but the principle is decreasing bandwidth consumption is desirable because the more bandwidth we use the more it costs to host the site. The introduction of the page transitions and latterly thumbnail pages greatly reduced bandwidth use upon introduc...

Personally I quite like them but they are there precisely to slow down navigation (i.e. reduce bandwidth usage) from people with faster connections clicking all over the place and not actually absorbing any information presented on the pages. I don't understand - what's the point? They're there to ...

I've now got a couple of fair profile shots of one of the otos. The otos are deathly afraid of the camera and go ballistic when it comes close, and as getting a good shot basically means getting camera and flash within 2 cm of the oto I'm probably not going to get better shots than these without res...

Anyway, I'll try to get some usable pics of the underside and of the dorsal armor plates tomorrow I've taken some of those images now... I've only got images of the underside of the head yet, as the fish are scared of the camera, but I'm working on getting a closeup of the side of the head too. The...

By coincidence I just asked a similar question to the in this thread in the loricariid forum, and perhaps you guys would like to have a look: http://forum.planetcatfish.com/viewtopic.php?t=2520 The fish which died were generally smallish fish, mainly minnows, platies and celebes rainbows. The water ...